User blog:Kombatgod/Marvel
I've been thinking about how to consider pages for series by Marvel and DC. Currently, only out-of-company crossovers are included for the most part, but that was just the way things naturally came to be, it was never explicitly decided. Rather than simply write a conclusion, I wanted to share my full thoughts, I hope you'll excuse me. From now on I'll only talk about Marvel, because it's a bigger universe, but everything I say is also valid for DC, except for specific examples I make, obviously. Here's the problem: Marvel is known for its crossovers, having a lot of them, but they go even further, to the point that all works in the Marvel Universe are part of a single narrative, almost as one single series. Iron Man doesn't simply show up in the Avengers, he does so and then mentions events from the Avengers in his main comics, and it might also happen that he doesn't show up on some occasion, being tangled in a particularily important fight in his own comic agains the Mandarin, for example. This means that on one hand we should represent it in some way, it's too important not to talk about the Marvel Universe on this Wiki... but on the other hand, there's too much to talk about! It woud be unthinkable to mention every single little reference between Marvel series. Dragonsblood23 once said "all the Marvel stuff is already gonna be related within the category of Marvel, it would be pointless to have Hulk connect to every marvel series out there." and that's basically true, but it's also a bit cheap to simply say "there. These series are all connected" without specifying how. What I'm saying is, while it's true that if one wants to know a list of series in the MU they can simply read the Marvel category page, we also need a specific way to treat connections between series in the single pages themselves. The two extremes are to either totally ignore any connection between Marvel series, or to include every tiny cameo. I'll refer to them as No-Marvel mode and Insane mode, respectively. One acceptable midway through is to only mention direct crossovers, spin-offs, and, very important in my opinion, to also mention the first connection of each series to the Marvel Universe, even if it's a minor cameo, for historical purposes. I'll call this Moderate mode. The third one seems the way to go, but in my opinion leaving out even little connections can be a shame for Crossover Wiki. I mean what if some reader wants to now what have been the interactions between Spider-Man and Silver Surfer for example, we can't just say "no, you don't need details about that, just know they're in the same universe". Taking everything into account, I came to a conclusion. This is my final idea, but I'm still open to discussion, as always. What I want to do is to have the page for every Marvel series adhere to the standard of every page on the Wiki, and that is, yes, I'm serious, to include every connection. I'd go Insane mode. I know I referred to it as unthinkable, but I've been doing the unthinkable lately. I've been scanning through 90 years or so of Marvel comics and taking notes. Just like I did for Disney some time ago, and wrote down the Mickey Mouse page, where I mentioned every tiny connection, even when it happens in an unknown Danish comic or something. I know this is crazy, and probably would make a lot of pages difficult to read, but that's why there's more, in detail: *The main page for every Marvel series is in Insane mode. *Marvel series with many connections to other Marvel series have a message in the Links to other series section reading something like: Being part of the Marvel Universe, this series has a high number of links to other Marvel series. See '''here' to exclusively see the links to non-Marvel series. See here for informations on how the series first entered the Marvel Universe.'' The two links are respectively to a non-marvel links sub-page (i.e. Spider-Man/non-Marvel links) and to the History of the Marvel Universe page. *The non-Marvel links subpage basically only is the Links to other series section, only in No-Marvel mode (It would be the same as I did for Taiko no Tatsujin with the page Taiko no Tatsujin/Links to other series (no songs)). The subpage also has a small introduction, reading something like This page only includes the series' links to non-Marvel series. See '''here' for informations on how the series is connected to the Marvel Universe.'' Once again the link is to the [History of the Marvel Universe page. (there also aithomatically is a link to the regular page on top of every sub-page) *The History of the Marvel Universe page includes a chronology of when and how each Marvel series was first connected to the Marvel Universe (It would look similar to the UGSF Timeline page). At the start after an introduction it says For a list of all series part of the Marvel Universe see the Marvel category page. *The Marvel category page also says ''All the series in this category (or, if necessair, "most series", then explicitly stating exceptions) are part of the Marvel Universe. See '''here' for informations on how each series is connected to the Marvel Universe.'' Once again the link is to the History of the Marvel Universe page. If we agree to do this, I don't demand, nor expect people to actually start to write in insane mode (after all, I'm the insane one here), instead expecting people to write in Moderate mode, but I do encourage to write about interesting cameos if you find them. I'm planning on personally turning Marvel pages into insane mode if we agree on this. I'm thinking about sharing the "Master Document", which is my notes about all connections, for other users to use as a reference, but I didn't thought about it when doing it, so it can be very confusing to others and sadly I wrote it mostly in Italian. Please let me know if you guys think this works and if not what would be your solution (but please look at this from a reader's perspective, don't worry about having to write too much, because I already have all the writing planned) (P.S. as I mentioned at the start, everything is also valid for DC, so yes, I'm also scanning through 90 years of DC comics and have a Master Document for it too.) Category:Blog posts